


Cold Comfort

by bea_bickerknife



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Comfort Reading, Couplets, F/F, Oblique Mention of Truly Hideous Soups, The Gayest of Overtones, The Purest OTP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-04-14 09:18:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14132988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bea_bickerknife/pseuds/bea_bickerknife
Summary: The nurse at Prufrock Preparatory School doesn't make house calls to the Orphans' Shack. Fortunately, a certain poet does.





	Cold Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> As ever, I own none of the characters in this work, nor do I derive any remuneration from its posting.

As any art thief, exotic pet procurement specialist, or moviegoer can tell you, the difficulty of a smuggling operation is often related to the size of the object being smuggled. A small portrait of Virginia Woolf, for instance, is considerably easier to remove from a museum unnoticed than a six-foot-tall sculpture of Leo Tolstoy. A pygmy marmoset can be concealed in a suitcase far more easily than even the smallest hammerhead shark, and while a reasonably-priced box of your favorite candy tucked into your pocket is unlikely to arouse suspicion at the cinema, a wagon full of homemade baklava nearly always will, no matter how many hours you have spent disguising your wagon as a seeing-eye dog.

Isadora Quagmire was not an art thief. She had never once procured an exotic pet, and the last time she had stepped foot in a movie theater it had been with her parents, who had purchased an enormous box of popcorn for her to share with both of her brothers.

She was, however, a smuggler. With one hand tucked inside her jacket, she hurried across the dry brown law that separated Prufrock Preparatory School’s cafeteria from the Orphans’ Shack. Her jacket did not conceal a small portrait of Virginia Woolf, and if you are at all familiar with the tale of the Quagmire triplets – which for your own sake I hope that you are not – then it will probably not surprise you to learn that it also did not conceal a six-foot-tall sculpture of Leo Tolstoy, a pygmy marmoset, a hammerhead shark, a box of candy, or a wagon full of baklava, homemade or otherwise. What it concealed instead was a medium-sized bowl of greyish soup, and as the steam from the soup warmed the space inside her jacket, Isadora found herself composing a couplet.

“Although it’s useful as a heater,” she muttered, watching as the white puffs of her breath disappeared into the autumn air, “this soup’s less pleasant for the eater.” She frowned. _Better not recite that one for Violet just yet_. _Not until she’s recovered, at any rate._

In the short time Isadora had known her, this was the second cold Violet Baudelaire had caught. The first had been mild and short-lived, but the second was proving to be a veritable viral juggernaut – a phrase which here means “disease whose symptoms were so severe and so unpleasant that they had confined the young inventor to her bed for several days.” Isadora’s legs ached from taking her friend’s place for Coach Genghis’ nightly running exercises, and the soup bowl was beginning to burn her stomach through the fabric of her dress, but when she stepped through the door of the Orphans’ Shack, she abandoned any thought of complaining about her sore calves and stinging abdomen.

In the absence of her siblings, who had accepted Duncan’s offer of hiding them in his dormitory to help prevent the cold from spreading, Violet had wrapped herself not only in her own blankets, but in Klaus and Sunny’s too. Only her face was visible, but one look at her colorless cheeks and her watery eyes and the red skin around her nose reminded Isadora of a dismal phrase she had uttered so often that it had become a kind of motto.

 _It could always be worse_.

No matter how true it is, however, “it could always be worse” is seldom a very comforting thing to hear, so Isadora chose to greet Violet with a cheerful “hello” instead.

“Ah- _choo_ ,” replied Violet, less cheerfully.

Isadora reached into her pocket with her free hand and offered her a clean handkerchief. “I was going to ask how you’re doing,” she said, lowering herself carefully onto Violet’s mattress without spilling the soup, “but I think you just answered that. Are you feeling better or worse than you were yesterday?”

“Better, actually.”

“Are you sure? Because you look…” Isadora trailed off. She had been about to say _terrible_ , but that wasn’t quite right. Violet looked _sick_ , of course, and Violet looked tired, and Violet looked miserable, but as far as Isadora was concerned, Violet could never look terrible. “Pale,” she finished, and that seemed like a more suitable alternative.

“I’m sure.” Freeing her arms from the nest of blankets, the eldest Baudelaire propped herself up in a recumbent position – the word “recumbent” here means “sitting partially upright with a pillow between her back and the grimy wall behind her” – and offered a weak but genuine smile. “See? I can sit up on my own again!”

Isadora grinned, although she couldn’t say she’d minded the way Violet had wrapped her arms around her neck when she had helped her with that particular task the day before. “Well, then you’re probably strong enough to face the soup.”

“Split pea again?” asked Violet.

“Beef and barley,” replied Isadora apologetically. “Carmelita got all the beef, of course, so I think it’s mostly barley.”

Looking thoroughly unsurprised, Violet picked up the spoon and swallowed first one mouthful, then another.

“Well?”

“I think I’m glad I still can’t taste anything.” She frowned faintly. “Although it could’ve been that horrible stew from last Friday, so I suppose it could always be worse.”

 _Maybe it’s her motto too,_ thought the poet, reaching into her pocket for her commonplace book, but she did not experience the thrill of excitement that usually accompanied the idea of sharing something with Violet. “‘If you bought our cook some fancy shoes,’” she recited, “‘he’d boil them down – ’”

“‘And call it stew,’” finished Violet. She set down the bowl, her smile growing a little wider. “I loved that one.”

Isadora could feel her cheeks flushing. “I’m glad,” she said, and the two sat for a few moments in companionable silence.

“Isadora?” Violet’s voice sounded sleepy and thick as she nestled back beneath the blankets.

“Yes, Violet?”

“Would you read me something?” She shivered. “Something about summer, maybe? Just while I’m falling asleep?”

Flipping nearly to the end of her commonplace book, Isadora stopped on a page she had copied down in the library just that afternoon. “‘The Summer Day,’” she began. “It’s by Mary Oliver. She’s one of my favorite poets.” She cleared her throat nervously.

 _“‘Who made the world?_  
Who made the swan, and the black bear?  
Who made the grasshopper?  
This grasshopper, I mean-  
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,  
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,  
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-  
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.  
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.  
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.  
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.  
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down  
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,  
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,  
which is what I have been doing all day.  
Tell me, what else should I have done?  
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?  
Tell me, what is it you plan to do  
with your one wild and precious life?‘”

Violet never answered Mary Oliver’s question, but the small, contented sound she made when Isadora bent down to kiss her forehead answered one that the poet had never quite known how to ask.

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was requested by an anonymous Tumblr user.


End file.
